I’ve gotten several request lately to review Quizzle. Quizzle is an online financial service that offers, according to the bold face type, a free credit report, free credit score and various financial tools.

Whenever someone points me in the direction of a personal finance company like this the first thing I check is if I can sniff out a scam. Often, you can spot the scam coming before you even see the fine print. Obviously, if something isn’t on the up and up, then there is no reason to waste any time on a review.

So, is Quizzle legitimate, or is this all a big con job?

Quick Quizzle Review

The biggest red flag for the various free credit score or free credit report offers floating around out there is to look for the words “free trial.” Typically, the way the free credit score scam works is that a financial company (including all three major credit bureaus) offer you a free report in big, bold type and in smaller type, lower down on the page, inform you that it isn’t actually free at all. Instead, you are being offered an automatically renewing trial membership in a credit monitoring program that costs $20, $30, or even $50 per month.

This kind of offering is all too common. There are some services that do follow through on the free offer. For example, I checked into whether Credit Karma was a scam and determined it wasn’t. My full Credit Karma review determined that the site offers a non-FICO score, but it is really free.

The way to see the trial offer trap coming, if you don’t see it before, is to watch out for the website to ask for your credit card information. There is no reason for a legitimate free credit offering to require your credit card information. Indeed, the reason you have to enter that information is so that they can automatically charge you the full monthly or annual fee for that trial service without asking when your free period runs up.

For example, Credit Check Total asks for your credit card number. To avoid suspicion, they actually offer free credit reports and scores for $1, so that’s why they need the number. Buried in the fine print, of course, is the information that they’ll use that same number to pay for your monthly subscription once your 7-day trial period is over.

Quizzle does not ask for a credit card number. So far, so good in this review of Quizzle.

Who Owns Quizzle?

While the ownership of a company is never a precise indicator of a scam, there is some comfort in knowing who you are doing business with. In this case, it turns out that Quizzle is owned by Quicken, or more precisely is, “part of the Quicken Loans family of companies.”

That doesn’t mean Quizzle is legit, but it does mean that this isn’t two teenagers sitting in their bedroom concocting an online identity theft scheme.

How Quizzle Makes Money

Finally, in order for something to not be a scam, there has to be a legitimate business strategy for it to exist. In Credit Karma’s case, for example, the company relies on advertising and referral commissions to earn its keep.

Quizzle’s money making strategy appears two-fold. First, the company is a Quicken Loans company. That means it doesn’t necessarily have to make money on its own. It does act as a feeder for business to Quicken Loans. In fact, on the first sign up screen, there is just one question that isn’t just name, address, phone number type stuff, and it’s about whether you plan to buy a house. Guess what sister company is very interested when the answer to that question is yes?

Second, Quizzle offers several additional services that it does charge a fee for. These charges are never automatic and are all advertised clearly as being something you pay for. You can determine whether these Quizzle offerings are worth it or not for you.

As it turns out, Quizzle is not a scam. There is no hidden charge and the privacy policy only allows them to hand over your personal data to other Quicken companies, so that’s par for the course.

I looks like a full Quizzle review is in order. I’ll start looking into that.

10 Comments on Quizzle Scam or Legit?

We work very hard to always “do the right thing” in helping people better understand their credit and how it can help them achieve their personal finance goals.

Just to highlight a couple of things you mentioned and we pride ourselves in:

* We are a truly free credit report and score (no credit card, no SSN number required)
* We are the only one that gives you a free credit REPORT too (It’s hard to fix a score without getting the report, right?)

As for the “How we make money?” question: After you get that free credit report and score, if you need some help or have a financial goal, we simply hope you will consider our credit tools or recommended partners. A lot of our nearly one million customers do!

No tricks, no scams

If you want to chat directly or walk through a personal demo–let me know.

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I truly have been satisfied with Quizzle and the fact that It’s Really Free! You offer great services for those like myself who Would love to Improve their Credit based on the History. Thank you so much for not being the scamming company like many others out there!! Happy Client!!

I really liked Quizzle. I’ve used it over 20 months and it really helped me see what I needed to, to repair my credit. It also gave me recommendations on what I should do. I originally did the free report, but I was trying to raise score as fast as I could so I got the paid plan…it was great. I saw all my activity, what I did right or wrong, and how it affected my score. I raised my score and was finally able to qualify for my home loan, then I quit the plan and I just get the free reports now.

Some of these comments look totally made up. Kathryn Hemingway really thats what you thought of Quizzle. “Happy client” Thats not how people speak in the US but is typical of an outsourced review.

Quizzle only gives you a score approx once every six months unless you pay. How is that monitoring or useful? Look on some real forums and you will see that Quizzle is famous for poor updating, lack of updating and not even reporting if items drop off your report. Its only goal is to get you to sign up for a monthly subscription. I use CK and CS, plus pay for myfico and have a complete picture of what is going on.
Quizzle is not a scam, but its not worth it unless you have more money than sense.

I tried to set up an account while multitasking. The website was not helpful, and I couldn’t figure out why I the information that I wanted was unavailable. They had locked me out of the system because I didn’t answer the security questions fast enough for them. Excuse me for being busy. I called for assistance and was told that I could not have an account with Quizzle, even though I am legitimately who I say I am. My only goal was to understand more about how credit scores are interpreted without having to pay for costly credit reports that won’t accomplish anything towards the goal of planning for one’s financial help. This company offered no real customer service. I would not recommend this website to anyone. Quizzle.com was a waste of time and energy. There has got to be an easier solution.